Wolvski wrote:

coloneluber wrote:

Wolvski wrote:

Im playing on Empire difficulty and MAN the AI gets ahead SO FAST. 
Im a Deity Civ 6 players and ive played all the OpenDevs so I sorta have a feeling that im relatively competent 4X game player. Not to mention ive played orther 4X games; but holy moly the AI is SO FAST and there doesn't seem to be much I can do, im a snail and they are a rabbit. My first playthrough on the Closed Beta I played the game on Humankind difficulty and I got instantly invaded and conquered by turn 32 so I decided to reduce the difficulty yet it seems like the AI is really, really strong. They are on the Medieval era  while im barely reaching  classical era with era stars and ive only researched 5 technologies. Am I doing something really wrong here? I doubt it, but is anyone else experiencing this? 

It's not just you.

The pacing of the game feels the strangest it has ever in the 3 iterations of the game I have played. Honestly I'm surprised that amplitude released a closed beta in the current state - there are too many obvious problems with pacing here that make it really difficult to judge the overall experience. A couple of the AI are consistently in medieval by turn 50. I know that AI are consistently given buffs in 4x games to make them competitive with the player, but a really important part of that is the illusion that the player and the AI are playing by largely the same rules. That illusion is completely shattered here.

Right now the game has a problem that you feel like you're in a race against the AI.  The fact that I didn't feel like I was racing to a victory condition is exactly why I had prefered the humankind opendevs over games like Civilization. Your opponents are miles ahead of you on science for the entire game, and this is more true on higher difficulties. They don't seem to have to manage stability very much if at all. And ffs, several full stacks of hunnic hordes on turn 40 is just ridiculous. This has actually happened to me. 

I'm sure there are pacing issues I could identify when it comes to the actual mechanic implementation, but pacing has as much to do with the mechanics the player experiences as it does with their relative experience to their opponents (in this case the AI). The AI in this beta seem so overtuned that it makes the player feel like they are falling behind when in reality I suspect the game would feel like it had a fairly good pace if the AI weren't so far ahead at all times.

I'll have more thoughts as I play more games, but this is issue #1 when it comes to feel of the game right now. They have tons of pop, a huge military, are an era and a half ahead on science, claim territory extremely quickly - it just feels like they have no constraints. They're getting so many bonsues that all opponents just feel the same regardless of the culture they pick.

I'll also add here that I feel gold was overnerfed. Carthage is basically mandatory now if you want to use gold in a functional capacity, and stability nerfs makes it really hard to justify getting commercial quarters when you really need that science, production, and food. It seems food production may have been nerfed? A little overdone in my opinion. You're getting the double whammy of needing more people producing food, and having to commit more precious stability to agriculture quarters.

Im glad to find some reassurance, 

Ive tried playin the game on Empire for the 3rd time and Ive quit playing for the 3rd time around classical era. I was pretty disappointed with Victor OpenDev because the pace felt way off. Now this time around im like almost upset, like I almost want to say "I don't like this game" and I really really want to. I like the artstyle and the combat seems at the very least interesting and better than Civilization. At first I thought maybe my approach was wrong so I tried a few different strategies but it all ended up the same way, Im way too far behind and the AI simply invades me everytime and I can't do anything about it. I can barely get my economy online when I have to defend versus much more numerous and advanced units by the time I hit the classical era. It's simply unplayable it feels. Im going to try again on the metropolis difficulty to see if it feels better but man as much as it pains me to say it. Im begining to think that Humankind is heavily flawed in its design. I think the Fame mechanic is not very fun or interesting; I'd say that the Fame mechanic actually cripples the game. 

Im a game developper as well and I have this suspicion with 4X games in general (Civ suffers from this too) that having multiple difficulty settings is one of the biggest mistakes for 4X games. It should only have a "Casual" and "Intended" difficulty so everything can be much easier and better balanced that way, particularly with AI and Economy. Ive been playing lots of Crusader Kings 3 recently and everything in that game feels solid, the mistakes you make and the decisions you take make sense. Granted its not a 4X but it shares some similarities. Anyway on CK3 there's only 2 difficulties, a casual mode where it disables achievements and a hard or regular mode that plays as it's meant to be played. 

We are still 2 months away from launch and things are subject to change so between that and perhaps my lack of understanding of the game, we might have ourselves a pretty good 4X game soon.

Sorry to the developers if I sound a bit harsh but im quite passionate about the game and hopefully I can provide you my most honest critique and feeling about the game currently. 

It is weird because you'll then get to the next era and all the AI will have picked Military so when you war against them which they are horrible at you'll probably get beaten due to their extra tech and better war support even when you win every battle and don't lose city's, sure its easy to vassalize, but it is also very easy to become a vassal

Even after getting all the stars in the industrial era I kept playing (on Humankind difficulty). And I was able to get absurd cities. This is my capital at turn 169:

Save file can be found here: Italians Turn 169.ctr

The city has 6551 industry, 2594 science, 1367 gold, and still 600 food per turn with its 109 pop. There are no more buildings to build and almost no empty tile for new districts. I feel like something is off when I get to that stage even before entering the final era. The late game definitely needs more balancing. The buildings need to be more expensive.

Another alternative would be to make district replacement more viable replacing some of the older districts that are not actually needed anymore with other kinds of districts.

Sorry for previous long post, but those were the most important notes IMO.  I can summarize the rest.

Population growth was okay, but a little slow.  I did realize near the end that I could build a ton more farm districts, so I may have been the reason for my slow growth.  However, I had avoided building too many districts as stability was very hard to manage late-game.  With more production, I could see building many commons quarters to compensate, but it just took too long.  3-4 turns each district means 10 turns to build 2 commons quarters and one other district (for a net -0 stability).  In a 300 turn game, that is a significant amount of time IMO.

Influence growth was slow early, fast late.  I loved/hated that influence now is spent on civics, so please keep it that way,  It was a good tradeoff.  There was not much reason for late-game influence, especially since by that point I could build outposts with money.  I wish there were an option to choose influence OR money, if both are options.  I didn't have enough influence early game to justify buying camp buildings, and forgot by late game.  Not sure if that mattered.

Money growth was OP.  By the end of the game I realized I had let it run away uncontrolled.  By turn 150 I had way too much, and was unnecessarily hoarding.  I probably could have won if I just spent it, my bad.  Early game it was fine, so I'm not entirely sure what caused it to balloon like it did.  Admittedly, it DID get WAY bloated after playing the British and building in all of my (two) vassals, but it already felt like I had a lot by then.

Production and faith were fine.  No major complaints, since it made me actually choose with buildings/districts to build at any given time rather than build them all.

Religion is mostly appropriate.  +20 science per holy site is crazy, especially with two "holy site" wonders.  That may be the only reason I caught up tech-wise.

I still love the neolithic, and had little issue with pop growth.  It was still way easier than getting science curiosities, but I think that's because the rate of science curiosities should go up.

Another alternative would be to make district replacement more viable replacing some of the older districts that are not actually needed anymore with other kinds of districts.

This would be a nice touch to later eras... upgrading "outdated districts" to brand new districts. Or even upgrading aging City Center or Administrative Center districts to also change their appearances. (from Ancient Era ones to modern ones)

So I started some games on Humankind difficulty and looked at couple saves that finished it, the one thing I hated about civ games without mods was short eras. Congratulations you have done it, the most disgusting speedrun 4X strategy game I've ever seen.

The AI is pretty much skipping the first 2 eras on Humankind difficulty, ancient era is about 10-15 turns shorter than victor and classical era is about 20 turns shorter than victor. So how does the pace feel for a 300 turn game? Nice joke! Looking forward to you guys fixing the issue with the length of the eras on Humankind difficulty.
Unless your take on difficulty will be about not giving the player any time if they want to pick something they want, so much for making our own story, right?
Ancient should be about 30 turns longer than it is now, classical about 25 turns. If you are going for 50 turn eras that is, not 20 turn eras?

There's still no challenge on the humankind difficulty. You have just made the beginning unplayable, after that the AI doesnt know what to do anymore because they dont just automatically get all stars handed to them and the player will win with economy.
Making the AIs buffs/bonuses/whatever scale up with the eras would probably fix the AI slowing down in progress after the 2 eras, but if u just buff the AI to keep the same pace the AI will end the game by turn 100. If you dont know any other way to prevent the AI from skipping eras with their economy bonuses, you could just hardcap their era progression by not letting them advance before x turn.

If you keep this difficulty design our options on the full release will be:
- Speedrun against the AI if we want to pick something we want
- or play against an AI so easy that it doesnt even matter if they are there or not
- play multiplayer

I was going to finish one game today on the last day, but Agrarian black decided to start stealing my population without ever meeting me on turn 22 so I'll leave it at that. Also I feel like testing any balance on lower difficulties is kinda pointless right now because you are expecting me to play so fast that I dont have time to do anything in the first eras. Any nerf at this point will make Humankind difficulty even more unplayable.

Thanks, I did not enjoy your closed beta.

Disclaimer; I've only played through twice (opendev and now). 

This may have been said, but in my experience I felt like the technology pace felt good because it was methodical and you were taking a choice in which tech to go for first over another. It also felt like units had a good lifespan before you researched the next new shiny thing. 

However, it felt like eras did not match up. I was consistently an era behind in tech early and only managed to reach railroads by the end of the 200 turns, but I could've been in the final era. I think stars should be a little more difficult to match up the era with tech a little better. Again, I like the pace of technology, each choice in tech does feel weighty and you don't have to immediately replace old things with new, but seeing myself never getting my cultural unit WHILE I'm that culture seemed wrong. This is all happening while I picked Joseon and France and managed to CRANK my science up because I was nervous I was too far behind. I was at like 3000 science/turn and still only got to railroads by turn 200. 

I was one difficulty above the default and the AI was also nowhere near that tech level either and they were choosing modern cultures. They were just getting halberds. I'm worried the AI might get stomped in tech (although I did take two science powerhouses late game).

Again, absolutely love the game, but I think this needs to be matched up a bit closer.

So this was the first beta I was able to play, and I got through about 2 and a half games, bouncing around the default difficulty and above. I also didn't really follow development, so I have no idea what changes were done to these systems.

Regarding Era Pacing, Medieval and up widened the gap between science and seemed to pass too fast. In both my games, the Early Modern / Industrial eras seemed to just fly by, super disconnected from the tech. I even managed to win the game by advancing to the Contemporary Era on turn 180, having just researched railroads 10-12 turns earlier, and not really getting to use them. This was skipping a huge amount of techs, missing out on even Medieval stuff, and producing thousands of science. Its hard to really get a feel for playing a culture when you were 3 in the past 40 turns. For that reason the earlier gameplay feels more memorable to me.

Pop growth feels alright, if hard to get going. I was also sad the growth was capped at 1/turn, though I can understand why with Forced Labor. Seems like Food is pretty scarce.

Certain resources have huge inflations later in the game. I felt my economy was alright in both games (and in my second I even went Carthage) and I had huge troubles doing any sort of buyouts later. I also ended up with over 17k Influence in my second game, with nothing really to spend it on, While in my first I was trying to do city buyouts that cost over 9k each. I also completely don't understand how Faith works, I just occasionally built holy sites and managed to dominate my continent, but I am unsure what any increase in Faith will do.

Religion was fun to use, but very passive. The buffs were interesting, but some seemed stronger than others, and I wish they were a little bit more interesting, more than just flat numbers. Better than Civics in their current form.

Don't really have much to say on the Neolithic, it was alright, and I liked being to able to scout a good location out before the game proper.

I played on "Metropolis" level and chose not to be very agressive, only reacting to wars.  My era pace consistently felt ahead of my technology pace.  By the time I had 3 stars after reaching Early Modern with the Spanish I only had researched three masted ship after a big tech push to be able to cross the ocean, and was a couple techs behind in every other branch.

I believe tech pace is OK and era stars are wrong.  Cultures felt like they came and left too fast, I was barely able to build special districts becaue of this and used the unique units mainly as the next culture.

The pacing is really good as is.  

Progressing through eras should be more flexible, where you have to earn 7 different stars, earning 6 of the stars should suffice. I had to mad specific efforts to advance that have zero to do with my play.  

The population growth is absolutely enjoyable. Some cities became metropolises (after the neolithic), while others withered away. Every city feels unique to a very realistic extent.  

I was controlling population over growth by using them to pay for instant completion of projects. If this is by design, then leave it be.   

Religion effects feel well tuned with reality.

What i didn't love was the practical city limit, the game should let us have one more city without penalties. Outpost are too easily overran.

I found my outposts evently constantly gaining and than losing a population (rinse and repeat) . It would be nice to do away with that.    

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?
  Too fast. On average, it took me 40-50 turns to research my way through an era, but only 20-30 turns to get seven era stars. The AI also advances very quickly, but falls behind in research. With my quick maths, I'd suggest either making era stars 33-50% harder to get or increasing the threshold from seven to ten era stars. The Aesthete stars seem to be especially easy to achieve, even when you're not trying.
  
  
• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?
  In my playthrough, I more or less rushed philosopy after getting my basic techs and later used the Builder ability of the Khmer to get a bunch of research quarters online. In the industrial era, I built the Statue of Liberty and Big Ben. So I would say, I science'd rather hard without actually playing a Scientist culture. With this strategy I managed to unlock almost every tech within the turn limit. (I can't really say what that means for a 300 turn game, because I don't know the tech tree in the Contemporary era.) Using my strategy, the speed of scientific progress seemed alright. But if your empire is focused on generating money or influence I can imagine you'd need more help science-wise, for example a way to buy technologies from other empires without osmosis events and/or osmosis events also triggering when you are influential over someone else. I mean, they like your culture so why wouldn't they share a few secrets?
  
  
• How do you feel about the speed of population growth? How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)
  Food is confusing: First, I'd like to understand how surplus food affects pop growth rate. Apparently, it's not linear but the intricacies of pop growth are rather hard to grasp right now. The pop growth tooltip in the city window needs more details. Secondly, a Farmer pop produces only 6 food without a Granary and 8 food with a Granary, while consuming 8 food. This means, each Farmer barely covers their own upkeep, and I'm not sure what to make of that. I realize there are minor benefits of having more pops in a city, even when they only produce their own food, but there must be way to make Farmers feel more rewarding.
  Another problem is that surplus food works differently than the other yields: Having twice the industry/money/science is always twice as good and it feels reasonable to have pops assigned to generating i/m/s. But when exactly is it reasonable to have Farmer pops? You cannot waste i/m/s, but you can actually waste food when you assign pops to farming but pop growth rate only increases by 1-2% per turn.
  I don't dislike the current system, but it's presented in a confusing and unintuitive way. It also doesn't help that the game values Farmers and the other jobs equally with the standard "balanced policy" settings. Because of this newer players might assume that it's a good strategy to have Farmers at all times. It also leads to a lot of micromanaging Farmers every turn.
  
  
• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?
  I think the bonuses are in an ok place right now. They are really good to help with your empire's weaknesses. As someone who likes to go wide I think tenets that scale with territories and Holy Sites are still better than flat bonuses, but tenets don't necessarily have to be balanced. If you're the first one who gets to pick a new tenet, then good for you.
  
  
• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?
  I like it. If you focus on growing your population and stay neolithic too long, there are less cultures to choose from in the Ancient era. I think it balances out quite nicely.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Hello everyone!

Much of the feedback we received in our previous tests revolved around the pacing of the game, its economy, and how in many areas numbers just grew too quickly. We have already made many changes, but we know that we are not quite there yet, so we want to hear from you what you think about the pacing now. Here are some questions to consider:

1. How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?
2. Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?
3. How do you feel about the speed of population growth?
4. How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)
5. Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?
6. How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

1. Too fast in my opinion.
2. Not at all, when I reached the Early Modern Era I was still stuck on mid-Classical Era technologies. I did not focus on science at first, but the end-game statistics showed that I was above the mean level of the AIs. And even when I did focus on it by choosing the Joseon and building science quarters everywhere, I barely reached the beginning of Early Modern Era's techs by the end of the game. That's why I think eras are progressing too fast, cause the research time seems ok to me.
3. I think it's ok.
4. Influence is lacking at the beginning, and abundant at the end. But I guess that's because I took the Franks, so it's ok.
5. The bonuses of religion where not really clear to me, I have to admit.
6. I loved it ! Population grows fairly quickly, but it's ok, the goal being to quickly get to the Ancient Era.

roger212 wrote:

Bridger wrote:

workswithdragons wrote:

magilzeal wrote:

I feel the pacing is mostly a problem because I feel very limited in what I can build due to stability nerfs from Victor and the reduction in effectiveness of sacrificing population to speed construction. Further, the map was resource-starved, with more cramped territories compared to Victor (at least, it felt that way, maybe it wasn't actually). I played at Nation and smashed the AI in every area, though it sounds like Empire will offer a good deal more challenge. The problem is everything is so slow to build now, and we are so limited in the amount of districts we can construct due to resources scarcity and the reduction in effectiveness of luxuries compared to Victor, it creates a "snowball" effect where building is much slower, so resource accumulation is also much slower. I was pretty consistently at least one era behind, sometimes two, in infrastructure and units, compared to my "cultural era".

+1 I think the nerf to population sacrifice went too far in the other direction and now I need 14 pop for one infrastructure so I can't even use it to get rid of my extra population who will die in two turns anyways :(

Seems like a good solution would be that you can only sacrifice 1 population per X turns (maybe one per turn?) and it would only add a set amount of Industry (1 pop sacrifice = 4x current 'industry per pop' value?).

I completely second this, one problem I had is that when I wanted to sacrifice population to build a wonder or holy site it wouldn't let me distribute the sacrifice among my cities. The current build forces you to sacrifice 29 pop or so straight from one city which is bonkers. Being able to sacrifice pop 1 by 1 would allow the player to distribute the population loss more evenly.

Yes! This is a great point and a complaint I had too.

My first game of Humankind ever (but decently experienced with other 4x games). Playing on the default difficulty.

In the early game the AI was a bit ahead of me since I didn't know what I was doing. My neigbors had agressive personalities so I soon got into a never-ending cycle of wars. The era stars started flying by (mix of all but mainly militarist and influence stars). When I reached Industrial era (somewhere around the turns 130-135), my research was in the Medieval era. And that's with 2 science cultures and decently heavy focus on research. Around turn 140 I was doing something like 1500 research / turn but no chance to keep up with eras.

Era progress should be slower (for leading civs) and research costs should be lowered imho. Competitive Spirit Era Stars felt completely irreleveant (1 star per 50 turns???). My suggestion would be to increase the amount of stars needed from 7 to 10 and replace the Competitive Spirit Era Stars with a time star mechanic that would start maybe 15 turns after a player enters any era and then generates a star maybe every 5 turns. After going to a new era, the mechanic goes back to the 15 turns countdown.

Population growth seemed ok.

Food - Industry - Research balance seemed ok.

Money was weird. Merchants seemed completely useless because money has much much lower value (compared to the other resources) yet Merchants generate the same amount as the other professions. At the same time money flowing in from other sources was completely bonkers. Especially the AI magically summoning 10k gold to pay for my demands after each war they lost.

Religion felt completely irrelevant. During the whole game I unlocked 2 tennets and as far as I know those tennets are the only thing I got from my religion? The whole system might as well not be in the game. I didn't like that the whole progression is tied only to the number of followers. Maybe add some mechanic to invest into religion with Influence?

Neolithic era felt fine.

Outposts building stuff with influence seems weird. Influence was pretty abundant for me so it was always a no-brainer to buy everything I could with influence before attaching an outpost to my cities.

fahnseN13 wrote:
Food is confusing: First, I'd like to understand how surplus food affects pop growth rate. Apparently, it's not linear but the intricacies of pop growth are rather hard to grasp right now. The pop growth tooltip in the city window needs more details. Secondly, a Farmer pop produces only 6 food without a Granary and 8 food with a Granary, while consuming 8 food. This means, each Farmer barely covers their own upkeep, and I'm not sure what to make of that. I realize there are minor benefits of having more pops in a city, even when they only produce their own food, but there must be way to make Farmers feel more rewarding.
Another problem is that surplus food works differently than the other yields: Having twice the industry/money/science is always twice as good and it feels reasonable to have pops assigned to generating i/m/s. But when exactly is it reasonable to have Farmer pops? You cannot waste i/m/s, but you can actually waste food when you assign pops to farming but pop growth rate only increases by 1-2% per turn.
I don't dislike the current system, but it's presented in a confusing and unintuitive way. It also doesn't help that the game values Farmers and the other jobs equally with the standard "balanced policy" settings. Because of this newer players might assume that it's a good strategy to have Farmers at all times. It also leads to a lot of micromanaging Farmers every turn.

If I'm not mistaken, all pops (not just farmers) consume an equal amount of food, so the downside of not having pops assigned to farming is that your population growth will be slower (because your food "shortage" will be larger). So they're basically pops that don't produce anything, but have a lower net consumption of food. This is important, because, unlike IMS, growth is not based on your "gross" food production, but rather your "net" food surplus. So, say you have a 3-pop city with all pops assigned to industry, and getting 25 food from exploitations. Your food surplus is 1 (25 produced by exploitations - 24 consumed by pops). By assigning one of those pops to farming, you increase your food surplus to 7 (25 produced by exploitations + 6 produced by pops - 24 consumed by pops), so growth rate increases by 7x. Now, if you do the math with a different base, say 50 food from exploitations, the situation changes, because now your surplus goes from 26 (50 - 24) to 32 (50 + 6 - 24), an increase of only 23%. So essentialy the value of farmers decreases the more food you exploit from terrain (leading you to assign more population to other jobs).

This, as you say, may not be so evident, but it does make sense from a game design point of view once you understand farmers are not supposed to be your primary source of food. The more you invest in food districts and infrastructure, the more you will be able to shift your people towards non-farming jobs while maintaining a decent population growth rate. If it didn't work this way, then the relative value of farming districts or food-related infrastructure would decrease significantly, cause you'd be able to sustain your non-farmer population with farmers alone (Try growing a city to 20+ pop without building food districts and infrastructure to see what I mean).

The biggest pacing concern for me in this beta was the pacing of science, especially when compared to the pacing of era progression. Science was far to slow, while era progression was a bit too fast. I think the pacing for science seen in this beta will be fine for a 300 turn game, but I still think it should be bumped up a bit in the final release just to be safe. Often times I would be one or even two full eras ahead of where I was technologically. 

The scaling industry cost of infrastructures and districts felt a bit too steep to me. It was difficult to keep up with, and getting industry districts or infrastructure didn't feel impactful enough to keep up with or surpass the scaling cost. It always took around 3 turns at minimum to make anything.

Stability was hard to grow in my experience. It took to long to make garrisons ( which in my experience are now the better district for gaining flat stability) due to the industry issues listed above. There were moments in my games where city growth came to a halt and I would have to wait around 10 turns for my stability districts to finish, only to have to repeat this process after building just one district. Since stability was so hard to gain, I actually started to focus of keeping my civic ideologies balanced so I could get the plus 20 stability bonuses. 

I like the pacing to influence, and I like how the penalty to overbuilding cities is on influence income rather than stability.

afarteta93 wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, all pops (not just farmers) consume an equal amount of food, so the downside of not having pops assigned to farming is that your population growth will be slower (because your food "shortage" will be larger). So they're basically pops that don't produce anything, but have a lower net consumption of food. This is important, because, unlike IMS, growth is not based on your "gross" food production, but rather your "net" food surplus. So, say you have a 3-pop city with all pops assigned to industry, and getting 25 food from exploitations. Your food surplus is 1 (25 produced by exploitations - 24 consumed by pops). By assigning one of those pops to farming, you increase your food surplus to 7 (25 produced by exploitations + 6 produced by pops - 24 consumed by pops), so growth rate increases by 7x. Now, if you do the math with a different base, say 50 food from exploitations, the situation changes, because now your surplus goes from 26 (50 - 24) to 32 (50 + 6 - 24), an increase of only 23%. So essentialy the value of farmers decreases the more food you exploit from terrain (leading you to assign more population to other jobs).

This, as you say, may not be so evident, but it does make sense from a game design point of view once you understand farmers are not supposed to be your primary source of food. The more you invest in food districts and infrastructure, the more you will be able to shift your people towards non-farming jobs while maintaining a decent population growth rate. If it didn't work this way, then the relative value of farming districts or food-related infrastructure would decrease significantly, cause you'd be able to sustain your non-farmer population with farmers alone (Try growing a city to 20+ pop without building food districts and infrastructure to see what I mean).

Thank you for your response. Yes, it's not a bad system in itself, once you understand that it's districts and infrastructure that support your pop growth. And that farmers are merely a small tool to optimize growth speed or to put upkeep-free population on hold until you use them for force labor or troops. I guess my problem is that some players might have problems figuring that out because:

1. Food and farmers behave differently than IMS and IMS workers.

2. Pops assigned to farming actually produce a surplus in that other 4X game Civ 6 (if you'll excuse the comparison).

3. The default "balanced policy" repeatedly assigns new pops to farming when it is not useful.

4. It's not particularly intuitive that a city with 24 pops, 4 of which are farmers, essentially produces the same FIMS as a city with 20 pops, none of which are farmers.

You provided a good breakdown of the food system and if something like this were in the game as a tutorial or a "how to play", I'd be very happy. Or maybe it's unnecessary and I'm underestimating the average Humankind player. :)

1) How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?
Progress through the eras is way, way too fast.
Over six runs through the scenario, I consistently reach the Medieval Era around 2000 BCE, with my best being 2158 BC. My best Early Modern was at 332 BC, which is as far as I played in the timeline before starting over, because the AI had no hope against me at that point.
Also, it just felt terrible, because there was *barely* enough time to build the Era Exclusive buildings in each territory before moving on, and that was with hanging around to get 15-20 stars in each era *just* to finish the exclusive buildings. This also made stability feel terrible, because there wasn't time to build garrisons, much less troops. The fundamentals of the game are just incredibly cool and fun, but the pacing sabotages almost every aspect of the game. 

2) Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last 300 turns?

Research was also a little too fast.
Without taking any science focused cultures, I was able to consistently begin Medieval Research around the dawn of the historical Classical Era (300 BC to 400 AD).
I think Research is very close to being correct, but just needs to be slowed down a little bit more during the Ancient & Classical Eras (assuming, of course, that you fix Era progression to be somewhere near historical break points).

3) How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

This is tough to answer, because I was so far ahead in Era buildings (Harappans, Carthage, & Khmer), that by 500 BC I was able to push 150-200 food & 200-300 industry on my four main cities (14 territories on them all together), so I was producing a new pop every 1 to 2 turns  in each city without any farmers (which feel useless and mandatory last place for pop allocation).

I also was burning through pops to rush production every time I hit 1 pop in 3 turns, and this pushed me back down to 1 in 1-2 turns again.

But, if the era pacing is fixed, pop growth *might* be a little too slow? Cause it felt pretty good & *not* too fast where the only districts I was building were Canal Networks, Cothons, Barays & Garrisons. But I don't know how large you think our cities should be. I also only lost four or five military units, meaning I didn't have to dig very deep to keep my military on par with neighbors. I think if I had been playing on a more difficult setting (and losing troops) pop growth would have felt to slow with fixed eras, because is it was, losing troops felt insanely punishing given the glacial production times split between infrastructure and troops (something that should be changed).

4) How do you feel about the value and growth of the different resources (including influence)?

Money and Science seemed to be well balanced.

Food production seems okay. You can really push it up there with Harappans & Celts & Khmer, but I think the problem is that the other culture bonuses are too weak.
Don't nerf the food focus cultures, but instead please give us compelling reasons to choose the other cultures, perhaps with geographic bonuses that allow cities to be powerful when *not* on river lands. This would make for much more interesting play, with more buildings giving *strong* bonuses off of mountains, grasslands, coastline, etc.
I absolutely love how important geography is in this game. I love it. But right now, rivers and food (faster pop growth) are so powerful, the other cultures are less exciting to choose, because they are clearly much weaker choices.

Industry production seemed fine, except that districts *always* taking 3 turns to build is jut super, super irritating. I had over 300 production on my capital, and garrisons still take 3 turns to build, which felt gamey and annoying. It would be less irritating if troop and infrastructure building weren't competing against each other. This also felt gamey and annoying, because it seems silly that training soldiers brings construction work to a halt in a giant empire.

If troop production needs to be kept to low numbers for whatever reason, than I suggest increasing the upkeep costs. Being limited economically feels more natural. Ancient era units could even have a food upkeep instead of gold.

Troops just felt too difficult to make, and too costly to risk in combat, because of the lost production time. The lost pop didn't seem important, but having to spend 12 turns to get another 2 spearmen and 2 archers? Given that the game is supposed to last 300 turns, this seems crazy. This means it effectively takes 200 years to train an army of spearmen and archers.

I really think you need to make troops queue and spawn instantly on the next turn. Remove troop production time, and let the pop cost and upkeep be the delimiting factors. Making production time the limiting factor on warfare just feels terrible, and it removes soooo much potential gameplay from each playthrough, because there is that much less tactical combat going on, because vast empires are spending centuries to train a few archers.

5) Are religions still too powerful, or are the bonusses at a more appropriate level now?

I just dominated my continent in every game, and I don't really know why, other than that I prioritized building holy sites, and managed to snag Stonehenge or Temple to Artemis in every game. The tier 1 & 2 tenets felt rewarding, and all seemed like viable options to shore up weak points in an empire. The 3rd tenets seemed less balanced. I can't see myself *every* picking anything other than the 50 gold or 50 science, and I will always pick the 4th tenet (3 more holy sites) because it's another 100 gold or 100 science. (Assuming, of course, that I get my pick and the AI doesn't beat me to it).
The one thing that seemed missing to me from Tenets, was military strength. A 2nd tenet that increases strength by 2 or 3 would be a very tempting choice, maybe even more tempting that Raising Monuments, which was what I picked every game. Some 3rd tenet options that gave combat bonuses along the lines of some combat culture bonuses would also be very tempting, e.g. units fighting within a territory that has a holy site of their religion fight at full strength even while damaged. Something like this could add a little more strategy to holy site placement.

6) How does the Neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

I think it felt pretty good when I played toward empire building. When I wanted Harappans and had to be first out of the Era, I had around 5-10 tribesman.

When I was willing to be the last one out of the Era, I had around 30 tribesman, and enough science to immediately pick up 3 techs, and this was also very satisfying.
So . . . I think it's okay. Players can make a choice to exploit the strength of tribal play, but risk losing the culture they want, and this feels like a fun choice to encounter and then make. 

A few feedback giving:

1. Getting stars by Influence accumalating is too overpowered victory way. The only strategy I could play vs hardass computers is focus on influence making.
2. Wonders takes to much industry to build and bring a little fame. All time I should cancel wonder building because of enemy threat came. Not sure wonders is good way to spend game resources.
3. I felt lack of vision. Even If you re strongest empire you can lose because of surprising enemy attack from the fog of war. And there is no way to come in time and protect your cities.